


pray you catch me

by parrish



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Pining, Rumors, beacon hills sucks, brooding boyfriends tbh, curse, hes got the magic in him, reg wolf derek I guess, well I'm p depressed atm so they will be too yay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 02:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7148309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parrish/pseuds/parrish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>stiles has whispers cemented to his cheek and his neck is broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pray you catch me

**Author's Note:**

> ok so I wrote this outta nowhere, elbows and then neck deep in depression, so it's acc an accomplishment that I was able to write and post it in the first place. but first fic aye lmao

Stiles doesn't really know who he was before Derek. And, that's unhealthy, isn't it? But before him, Beacon Hills was just some empty town, desolate and deserted, dark compressed climate crooning in colorless ozone. It was just some place that shook deep in his bones and some depth of his waterless witching being. Necromancy was romance at its highest form, and magic revived his malnourished soul. Everyone's voices were hushed shouts in howling wind and Scott howled in loss, too lost in his own mind to wonder what was lurking in Stiles's. It wasn't really his fault; love, at first, bloomed like heady hibiscus, and he didn't know what all that red stretching dolorously on its petals meant until Allison left. Love was as much of a curse as Stiles was. So why did he bother to fall in it?

 

-

He was lost, too, those years before they'd met that felt like lifetimes. Lost in his haunted head, lost in the monstrous magnetism of the magic stirred up in his pots and palms. Lost on how to go about life when he was a bomb praying for his body in balm (the silent self destruction was neat, but not new). It was wearing on his bones - those aching _agonizing_ years that felt like ages - as if he was already wasting away six feet under. He was a walking tomb, his insides folding and ready for infinite end. It felt like a feared fate, something rotting at the back of his raw throat. The sheriff was worse off than he was, whispering Claudia in phantasma. Faintly reaching for a son his decayed cadaver couldn't touch even if it wanted to. How could he heal him when he was broken, too? Just as lost, if not more? And maybe that was something that just happened to run in the family. His mother lost to dementia, his father to memory. Their only son to mystical madness.

He'd let his steps sink cement, back then, melancholy marks his mouth couldn't make, and Lydia could smell his carious core, tried to reach out in that harsh but sweet way she always had to her. It was thoughtful, but couldn't console, and he never wanted her to feel like it was her job to.

When Derek came, though, things were different. The sky still hung with heartsick, clouds clumped in contrite and that dour dysphoria Beacon Hills always emptied into the air, but the howls hit the wind in smaller waves and when he faced Stiles that first day, the floorboards cracked and croaked in attempts to hover, and no one could really blame him.

"You must work with the earth - the woods, the trees. I smelled you from New York, some bitchy breeze that wouldn't leave me alone and led me here," he'd said. He was early in age but had a soul as old as those trees that swayed deep in the town; its wide heart. He talked like he knew the secrets of the world but claimed they were stuck somewhere inside Stiles. He spoke like the universe knew him well, and he shifted like his death dark fur and steel eyes were an asset to hell - like he was as much of a hell dog as Parrish. It was bloodcurdling and breathtaking. Stiles was even convinced it was as bewitching as he was. His alchemy matched Stiles perfectly. It calmed the sortilege underneath his skin.

The air shifted when Derek came, and it soothed Scott, managed to gather the towns attention - the power they both brought staining skies and searing soil. How could they not become noticed? Beacon Hills was aware of the charms buried in the dirt and the nefarious nemeton; aware of the supernatural things edging the town until dark or moon came. Though they didn't speak about it in anything but hushed tones and looks, they knew, and you didn't need unearthly eyes to see the chaos yet calmness that the couple brung. The impact was infamous, and love snuck up on Stiles like his mothers death did.

 

-

"Did you bring the chocolate?" Lydia mumbled over her red wine, barely missing the counter as she sat it down in exchange for the Reese's and Snickers weighing the bag. Naturally, Beacon Hills was a romantic place that brought nothing but tragedy to romantic relationships. It was some airborne curse, a hex directly from Mother Nature herself, something they just had to deal with. Stiles suspected that it was to make them stronger, more focused. He didn't know why he expected Derek to be any different, but he did.

Stiles followed her to the couch where Fight Club began to play; one of his favorite movies, and apparently, Jackson's, too. They didn't talk much, because, well, Jackson was an _asshole_ , but he knew that Lydia loved him, that he liked Fight Club, the gym, and that he was... an asshole. Lydia never really mentioned if he loved her back, or hobbies beside snarky comments and lifting weights. She was more of a science and slightly narcissistic kind of girl, which Stiles could kind of see complimenting Jackson's huge ego. She was stoic and sweetly stern, until a breakup. Then, it was stoic and sadly sadistic. He didn't mind being her punching bag - he remembered the times she bled for his benefit. Remembered when she sat with him in his dejected despondency and talked about organic chemistry, his magic malodor in the air.

"We could watch something else, you know." He let the offer hang in the air before turning to look at her. She was poised in her preppy attire and staring straight ahead at Brad Pitt. He let it dissipate.

After a while, between men throwing blows that planted like bombs from stereo static, she mumbled, "I wish I could have what you and Derek have. I talked to Malia about it - for girl empowerment and shit, you know? Could you imagine how much of a wreck that was? She threw me that grin with all teeth and said being alone was 'tight'," she did air quotes, and Stiles couldn't help but laugh. It was a bit of a nervous laugh, because as odd (or maybe not) as it sounds, Lydia never shared this much about her feelings or personal life, and he didn't know what to do with it. "I don't know. I just want something as strong as you two. He's like your soulmate... or something." She added with a shrug, which was a habit she'd developed long before they became friends. Back when she was still pretending to be the mindless strawberry blonde to balance her popularity. "I doubt that even this shitty place could break the two of you up." Her voice trembled slightly, like a glimpse of a Banshees scream, and she didn't know it, but it was like she broke the last seal.

 

-

Beacon Hills is not a foundation that can hold amorous accords. The architecture can only handle so much; the weight of the secrets, the magic, the evil and metaphysical. The moon heavy on the roof of it. So, eventually, something happens, like it always does, like it's meant to. Stiles has whispers cemented to his cheek and his neck is broken, the muted utters soaking into his skin and meditating on his spine. Kate Argent a constant mutter; how her niece destroyed his best friend and now she was destroying him. Familial festive affairs, he'd heard. Lets it seep deep into his bones like carvings.

Derek became a stranger. His eyes were cold grey instead of strong steel, his hands, wide and steady, like traps, biting off every piece of Stiles. His kisses like the bittersweet lip of a blade, his mind something that Stiles couldn't comprehend anymore. That stirring and shuffling in his being could feel his unsettlement; the palms that once met as one spat out sour sparks, and then he was watching Derek from the window touching the knob and pulling back with bubbling red skin. Hibiscus revealed itself to Stiles that day, more bloody red than pinks and yellow-oranges. They became different variations of white hot suffering than sunshine and sunset.

And so that was that. Stiles' sorcery kept Derek away, on the other sides of sidewalks and rooms, behind a thin enemy line, unresolved and stinking of hydrogen sulfide. Derek's protests couldn't quite reach him; there was small bits of "please" and "it's not what you think", but they felt careless and dishonest. Maybe it was because of Beacon Hills, shaky housing that permeated failure. Maybe the whispering voices and witchcraft was too much for him to think about what was true and wasn't. All he knew was that heartbreak hung in his chest like the curtains of clouds, hung to him like Scott, wounded and remorseful. He missed Derek like he missed his mother, mind numbing and hopeless, and then he realized he was just another crushed person like the powerful powders cluttering his nightstand and stove. He was lost again, floating yet frozen in time. He figured this was what fate wanted. He let his garden poison and reek like sulfur, he let his magic puncture the walls of his home and split his windows. He let it all happen because it was supposed to and  _had_ _to,_ because his house crumbling was nothing compared to Beacon Hills itself tumbling down if he lost himself in love and kept it. He had to sacrifice like everyone else.

Until he didn't. Until Derek showed up to his door, drenched in the shavings of trees - the town's _true_ heart - wild eyed and smelling of earth and his mothers unexpected death and old relationships like Lydia and Jackson, John and Claudia, Scott and Allison and Laura and Malia and _life_. 

Until he made more wood, marred architecture and town of the heartsick to stand on. Sulfur dissipating like unanswered questions and those arms around him, those big, steady hands twisting his neck back into place. Those sparks humming in symphony again. "It was time _it_ made a sacrifice. Everybody else had." He wasn't wrong.


End file.
